LONDON (Alliance News) - Panmure Gordon & Co. PLC Tuesday said its half-year pretax profit declined significantly after administrative expenses jumped because of its restructuring programme last year.
The stockbroker and investment bank said it expects pre-bonus operating costs to be lower in the second half of the year than in the first six months after the restructuring takes shape.
Panmure Gordon said it made a GBP335,000 pretax profit for the six months to June 30, down 84% compared with a GBP2.0 million pretax profit for the corresponding period the year prior.
Administrative expenses increased 40% to GBP12.2 million. Although Panmure's net commission and fee income increased 16% to GBP13 million, it could not offset the administrative expense rise.
"Increased administrative costs include some non-recurring items and reflect the acquisition of new teams associated with a sharpened focus on allocating resources to revenue generation," Philip Wale, chief executive, said in a statement.
"Whilst our underlying business remains solid, we continue to look for new ways to deploy our capital more effectively. We are also working more closely with QInvest, our major shareholder, to exploit potential synergies," Wale said, adding, "we look forward to the remainder of the year with confidence."
Panmure was active on 16 significant transactions for its clients, which helped them to raise over GBP900 million. Panmure said its pipeline of corporate transactions for the rest of the year is healthy. The largest of these deals was the GBP1.54 billion IPO of Partnership Assurance Group PLC.
It also said its investments fund team completed its first IPO, which raised GBP153 million for the client, Polar Capital Global Financial Trust PLC.
Panmure shares were Tuesday quoted at 139.50 pence, down 0.50p.
By Samuel Agini; samagini@alliancenews.com; @samuelagini
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